Philip Hollobone
Main Page: Philip Hollobone (Conservative - Kettering)
The Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster (Mr Oliver Letwin)
I beg to move,
That the draft European Union Referendum (Voter Registration) Regulations 2016, which were laid before this House on 8 June, be approved.
It will probably help the House if I restrict my remarks simply to explaining the nature of this statutory instrument, as the issues it raises will no doubt be debated in the ensuing discussion. The House will already be aware that on Tuesday night, between 9pm and 10pm, there was a huge surge of applications for registration—three times as many in one hour as have ever been experienced—and that, as a consequence, the website crashed at around 10 o’clock. Therefore, there were two hours during which it was lawful to apply to register in time to vote at the referendum, but people were denied that opportunity. The House will also be aware that it is the Government’s intention, following the strong cross-party support and the Electoral Commission’s approval, to introduce legislation to enable people to apply for registration up to midnight tonight and, if they are registered, to vote in the referendum. I want to explain to the House how the statutory instrument will achieve that.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I am listening to my right hon. Friend with great interest. He says that the website was down for two hours. What was the hourly rate of applications, and therefore what is his official estimate of the number of people who wanted to register in that timeframe but were unable to do so?
Mr Letwin
My hon. Friend asks a very good question. Unfortunately, I can give him only a very partial answer. We know as a fact that there were, if memory serves, 214,000 applications in the hour leading up to the crash. What we cannot know, because it is in the nature of the computer system that it cannot tell us, is how many people either tried or would have tried to apply during the succeeding 90 minutes or so during which they were unable to apply. The answer is therefore that I cannot tell.
Wayne David
Yes, that is entirely reasonable. We could cite many examples of people the length and breadth of the country, particularly young people, who for reasons like those that my hon. Friend has given have not found time or had the inclination to register to vote. I am heartened that although many people say that the vote has not engendered a great deal of interest so far, the referendum has certainly excited a great deal of interest among young people. The indication is that many of the people who have applied quite late are young people who want to exercise their democratic right.
Mr Hollobone
It is obviously good news that the referendum is generating excitement among people of all ages who want to take part in the ballot. However, many students are doubly registered, at their home address and at their place of learning. So that those people do not get into trouble, should it not be made clear that even if they are legitimately registered twice, they cannot vote twice? Should that not be explained, especially to those who are voting for the first time?
Wayne David
I think that most people realise that it is one person, one vote. That is a fundamental, core principle of our democracy.
Mr Hollobone
I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with great interest, and I agree that there should be a post-match analysis. Does he share my concern that that analysis will be conducted by the Electoral Commission, which will be writing a report about itself? Should there not be some kind of independent analysis? Otherwise, the report will automatically be skewed.
Stephen Gethins
Of course the Electoral Commission should look into this matter; we should always consider how we can improve our democracy. I hope that the Government will also look into this issue, given that they bear the burden of responsibility for it.
Mr Jenkin
I was going to come to that later but will deal with it now. With individual registration, it is imperative that every new registration is cross-checked with national insurance data and, if necessary, Border Agency data. There is no post-registration audit of electoral registers, so anybody who is mis-registered stays on them. This needs to be looked at, because we have no idea how many non-UK EU nationals not from Malta, Cyprus or Ireland are recorded as eligible to vote and have been sent ballot papers, not because of a software glitch but simply because they were mis-registered, either on purpose or inadvertently. Indeed, one electoral returning officer told a member of the House of Commons Library—off the record—that if somebody lies on their registration form and it cannot be checked, nothing can be done about it. The person still has to be registered. There is no way of cross-checking to find out whether someone has lied.
Mr Hollobone
I am listening to my hon. Friend’s remarks with great care. This is an issue for my constituents, who are really concerned about it. If an EU citizen in the borough of Kettering applies to be on the register but ticks the wrong box—either inadvertently or deliberately—and declares that they are a UK citizen, can that be picked up and the application rejected? I have not yet heard that there is a mechanism for doing that, and certainly not if there are to be 100,000 or hundreds of thousands in just a few hours.
Mr Jenkin
My hon. Friend raises a legitimate question, and we should inquire further into it. There should be a fail-safe way of ensuring that someone is who they say they are when they register their vote. At the moment, there is not. If people on the register now who are registered incorrectly are being sent ballot papers, and if it is not due to a software glitch, there is no way of picking it up.
I have urged the Electoral Commission to make more public statements, because the system now has different franchises for different purposes. Why will there not be notices in polling stations? The electoral officer is bound to offer a ballot paper to someone who is on the register, but a “Read this” notice could make it clear that people who are not eligible to vote but who knowingly do so commit a criminal offence.
Mr Philip Hollobone (Kettering) (Con)
I think it is worth pointing out that the reason we are having a referendum at all is that the Conservatives won the last general election. All the Opposition Members who are celebrating this massive increase in registration should bear it in mind that none of this would have happened had they formed the Government following the election.
Mr Hollobone
Because the Labour party would not have agreed to a referendum on our membership of the European Union, and we would therefore not have seen more than 2 million extra people registering. The Conservative victory means that we are a healthier democracy than we could ever have been if Labour had won the election.
Mr Speaker
The hon. Member for Kettering (Mr Hollobone) is a most assiduous Member of the House, and is also extremely particular about adherence to conventions and scope. I therefore do not encourage him to dilate further upon the point that he has just made. He has made it, but I know that he will now wish to focus on the instrument, and not beyond it.
Mr Hollobone
I am grateful for your wise counsel, Mr Speaker.
The instrument amends the European Union Referendum Act 2015, which specified what we all assumed at the time was the last possible date for registration. One of the worrying aspects of this revision is the fact that we are now being told that it will be possible to register two days after what the Government had told us would be the last possible date. I fear that the Government inadvertently misled the House. Surely, if the aim is to encourage more people to register, it is desirable to specify the last possible date, which is what we have now arrived at by means of the instrument. I urge the Government, when it comes to future elections, to ensure that “the last possible registration date” means precisely that.
I understand that the instrument does not change the postal vote application deadline. There will be instances in which people apply for postal votes without being on the electoral register, and assume that they will be given postal votes because they are registering today. My understanding is that they will not qualify for postal votes, because it is not possible to apply for a postal vote without being registered.
Mr Letwin
I am sorry to intervene, but I think it would be helpful for me to do so at this stage. My hon. Friend has asked a serious question, but what he has said is not accurate. I asked the same question myself, because it is a fine point.
It is not, in fact, necessary to be registered to apply for a postal vote, although it is obviously necessary to be registered in order to receive and exercise that vote. Those who applied for postal votes in time for the postal vote deadline, and are now able to register in time for the new registration deadline, will qualify for postal votes.
Mr Hollobone
I am most grateful for that clarification. We have ended up with the right result, even if it is the wrong way round.
I am concerned about an aspect of student voting, although I hope the Minister will tell me that I have got it wrong. It is great that so many young people are signing up to take part in the referendum, and of course many participants on both sides will be very enthusiastic. First-time voters, in particular, may not appreciate a fairly simple point that many other voters do appreciate, which is that even if people are registered twice, they cannot vote twice. There is a serious point to be made here. My understanding is that voting twice is a criminal offence, and that it is the police who investigate it. I think it would be a great shame if students ended up being investigated by the police because, in their enthusiasm and naivety, they voted twice.
Mr Kevan Jones
It is, again, trying to confuse the situation to say that that will create a problem. How could someone who was registered in Durham—other than by means of a postal vote: I must say that before the hon. Gentleman comes back at me with it—vote in two places on the same date? That is not possible.
There is another point which the hon. Gentleman and other Members have missed completely. When people walk into a polling station, they see a long list of dos and don’ts, and the don’ts include voting twice.
Mr Hollobone
There is a long list of dos and don’ts, but no one reads it, because the type is so small and the notice is so big. It looks like what it is, a load of legalese about the correct procedures. The hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of the House and an experienced politician, and he knows about democratic procedures. The serious point that I am making—not from a vote leave standpoint, or indeed from a remain standpoint—is that there will be hundreds of thousands of first-time voters who do not understand registration, and because they realise that they can register at the last minute, they have done so. What I want to avoid is police investigations afterwards because students have made a silly mistake.
Mr Jones
The hon. Gentleman has no evidence whatsoever that this will be a big problem. He is obviously trying to get a headline into tomorrow’s Daily Mail. As an experienced candidate and an experienced election agent, I can tell him that anyone who is unclear about the rules can always ask the poll clerks, who will explain the process of voting.
Mr Hollobone
I am sure that no students in Durham will be affected by this potential anomaly.
Stephen Gethins
I am not sure what the hon. Gentleman is saying about the quality of the universities that he knows, or about how fast their battle buses must be to take them from one place to another, but will he at least accept that we should be encouraging students and young people to become involved as a point of principle?
Mr Hollobone
I have already said that twice, but I am happy to say it again. I think it is great that we are seeing loads more people signing up to the electoral register, especially young people. If it were up to the hon. Gentleman’s party, or the other party, we would not be seeing that at all.
The instrument makes it clear that there will be a post-match analysis, and that the Electoral Commission will have to produce a report on the conduct of the referendum. This is a serious point: the Electoral Commission will be writing a report about what the Electoral Commission has done in the referendum. Now, that is fine—that is one piece of evidence—but there is no provision in the statute for another investigation to be conducted.
This is a matter for my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Mr Jenkin). I think that, whatever the result of the referendum, it will be an urgent priority for his Committee to initiate an investigation of not just this matter, but the way in which the system has worked in general. I understand that there are issues involving the electoral arrangements as a whole—not just registration, but the way in which the referendum is being handled—owing to the scale of the challenge confronting registration officers, and those who conduct the referendum itself. I urge my hon. Friend and his Committee to begin that work as soon as possible after the referendum. The Minister helpfully said that there were 214,000 applications to register in the hour before the crash. I think I am right in saying that the down time of the crash was one hour and a quarter.
Mr Hollobone
Right. None of us knows, but it would be reasonable to assume that about 400,000 possible registrants were not able to register. To make up for this down time—I am not saying that this is wrong; I am just pointing it out—we are effectively extending the registration period for two days. It is very important that Her Majesty’s Government publish the number of registrants in that two-day period. Effectively, they are stopping the registration clock as of midnight two days ago, and they will publish the numbers of applicants for the two preceding days.
Mr Letwin
It may help the House and my hon. Friend if I say that, according to my latest information, there were 242 applications yesterday, which was the first of the two days to which he is referring. That is just over half the number he is talking about across the two days.
Mr Hollobone
I am grateful for that. It is great to have the latest information here in the House.
I close on this point—I keep reiterating it, but, as usual, the Government do not seem to listen—why do we not have the simple system whereby every time a member of the public is in contact with a Government agency of some sort, whether it be a local authority or the benefits department, they are asked the question by a Government official, “Are you on your local electoral register. This is how you apply, and we encourage you to do so.” I do not see why that should be difficult for the Government to organise across Departments, and it would help to minimise the scale of this problem in future.